Branding, Reviews, and Pricing Strategies for Property Management Companies

A lot of the property managers we talk to who want to grow say the same thing, “I just need more leads.”

In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull discuss the 6 major leaks that property managers can have in their sales pipeline and why they don’t just “need more leads.”

You’ll Learn

[06:22] 1. Positioning

[10:14] 2. Perception

[11:19] 3. Presence

[15:30] 4. Pricing

[18:18] 5. Purpose

[20:24] 6. Pitch

Tweetables

“Does it make sense to turn on the hose full blast if there's all these leaks?”

“People want to work with a specialist. They don't want to turn over their biggest assets ever and their financial future to somebody that's dabbling in property management.”

“If your reviews are good, it backs up everything that you say in your sales pitch.”

“Are you clear on your personal motivations for why you have this business beyond just getting money?”

Resources

DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind

DoorGrow Academy

DoorGrow on YouTube

DoorGrowClub

DoorGrowLive

TalkRoute Referral Link

Transcript

[00:00:00] Jason: Get these things dialed in and shored up and what you'll find is: you may not need nearly as many leads.

[00:00:05] You won't have to spend nearly as much money on advertising or any money. 

[00:00:12] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently than you are a DoorGrow property manager.

[00:00:32] DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income.

[00:00:54] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGroww, and now let's get into the show.

[00:01:19] Sarah: We wore DoorGrow colors today. 

[00:01:20] Jason: Oh, we did. For those 

[00:01:22] that can see us. We're wearing DoorGrow colors. It's not on purpose. Yeah. Green and blue. All right. 

[00:01:27] Sarah: I wanted something easy. It was like, let me get a comfortable dress that looks nice, but it's comfortable. Ladies know what I'm talking about.

[00:01:34] They're like, "yeah, those are awesome. That's this."

[00:01:37] Jason: Okay. It's good to know. So we were talking about what we should talk about today. And one of the things that I've been doing on sales calls in conversations with potential clients is taking them through a diagnosis and diagnosing the front end sales pipeline of their business.

[00:01:56] The challenge is a lot of people come to us that want to grow. We're called DoorGrow. So we certainly can help with that. We've been doing that for a long time. One of the things we've noticed though, is that a lot of times people think, "I just need more leads." They just think they need more leads. And some of you are just going to be listening to this, so I'm not going to do a drawing, I'm going to explain what I would usually draw, but I usually draw like a spigot, or a faucet, or whatever you call it, and a hose attached to this, and this long hose, and then a like a plant pot at the end of this hose that you're trying to water a little tree or something.

[00:02:30] And I usually put fruit on it because that's your business and you want to get something from it. Like you want it to bear fruit, like make you money or something. Right. And so we've got this tree we want to grow and we've got this pipeline. This is our sales pipeline, this hose. And we think we just need to turn on more water.

[00:02:46] Right. It seems to make sense. What I've realized though, over time is we used to do lead generation for property managers. Like that was like a offering that we had, a core offering that we had for our clients. So we would help them just turn on the hose, like full blast. We'd help them turn that on and they wouldn't be able to get business.

[00:03:05] They wouldn't be able to get enough water to grow their business. Like it wasn't working and it wasn't the leads. It wasn't the lead generation necessarily. It was the hose. They had like all these major leaks that were preventing it. So over time, I started to see like, they'd be like, "well, it's not working."

[00:03:19] I'm like, "well, you're not even answering your phone," or "you're waiting 24 hours before responding to a lead. And it's only good for like 15 minutes." And there was just all these leaks and problems. And there were some bigger, more macro level problems in their sales pipeline.

[00:03:32] Like their pricing was terrible, so it was off. Or their branding was off. And so people were like, "well, yeah, but they look like a real estate company," or their website was awful and it would send traffic to their website and it was just leaking money. And so the fluid, if you will, that flows through the pipeline.

[00:03:51] Is five currencies, time, energy, focus, cash, and effort. These are what you have to invest. And if you're shelling out a bunch of money, time, energy, focus, all of these things, right into the pipeline because you're just turning it on full blast, it's just going to leak out and you're just wasting all of that.

[00:04:09] You're wasting time. You're wasting money. You're wasting your energy. Right. And it, and a lot of businesses are like, "I just need more leads." So I call this the leads myth. And so we found it to be effective is to start looking at the business and if they come to us saying, "Hey, we want to grow."

[00:04:24] "Okay. How would you like us to help?" They're like, "we need more leads."

[00:04:27] "okay, you may need more leads, but first, does it make sense to turn on the hose full blast if there's all these leaks?"

[00:04:34] "What leaks?" Right? 

[00:04:35] "Okay, well, let's take a look at your business and see if you have any of these." So we thought today we would get into some of these leaks so you can self assess and figure out, all right, how's my business doing?

[00:04:43] We're going to do the quick, super fast version of this. And I recommend you set up a longer call with our team so we can go through this. Okay? 

[00:04:52] Sarah: Oh, or if you want the short, shorter version and you're like, "Hey, I want to see it. It's visual." then go to YouTube on our YouTube channel. We have a video that we created about this and our hose just died and like, I think it froze over the winter and we went to go turn it on and everything was leaking. So then we were like, "Oh, Well, before we throw the hose away let's make a video because this is what we talk about all the time."

[00:05:16] Yeah. So we did make a video. So if you want to visually see this and watch Jason get water everywhere and make a big mess, then watch a video. 

[00:05:25] Jason: It's pretty goofy. So if you wanna laugh at me or make fun of me, that'd be a good one to watch. So just go to youtube.com/doorgrow and go to the playlists that we have and then go to funny videos and I'm sure you'll enjoy laughing at me and Sarah laugh at ourselves, especially.

[00:05:44] All right. So let's chat about this, these leaks. So these are some of the things that may be preventing you from closing as many deals, and you may have plenty of leads, but you may not be closing as many as you could be. And so these are some of the leaks. So, there's six major leaks that we focus on in our Rapid Revamp class, and if you're interested in this class where we help you shore up all of these leaks so that you can more easily grow more quickly without even changing whatever lead generation stuff that you're already doing or what's working, this will increase the output of what makes it through the hose and to grow your business Okay, so the first leak at the very beginning, and these are all blind spots the most businesses have is Positioning and so in positioning, we focus on the brand branding And so what are some of the things related to branding?

[00:06:37] Sarah: Well, the big one that we see a lot, and we did a video about this too is what is the name of your company? Is it something "real estate, realty, properties, investments, assets, solutions," things like that. So if any of those is how your brand name ends. then that could be a very potential big issue in your branding.

[00:07:05] And you could be turning people off before they even decide to have a conversation with you. 

[00:07:10] Jason: Yeah. People want to work with a specialist. They don't want to turn over their biggest assets ever and their financial future to somebody that's dabbling in property management but is primarily focused on real estate.

[00:07:21] So if you have realty real estate in your name, for example, you have a significant leak here. So if a hundred percent flow through would be the ideal, you have maybe a 50% right at this stage. There's this there's loss. Is your name generic to the location? For example, you're Phoenix Property Management in Phoenix.

[00:07:39] Or is it generic to the industry like property management inc? Sorry guys. Or real property management, right? These things are really difficult to remember right generic names. And that hurts word of mouth and it hurts people telling people about your business and all that kind of stuff, right?

[00:07:55] So is it unclear that it's property management? Like Sarah mentioned, like maybe we're "Prestige Properties or Radiant Rentals." Radient Rentals, "oh, do you do bouncy houses and like chairs and stuff for weddings?" Right. So there might be confusion there in the marketplace, or do you have a overly common name? Could be a problem. Like lighthouse, just Google lighthouse property management, and there's like a bazillion companies all over the place that want to be a lighthouse.

[00:08:19] And so they all get mixed up and confused, right? Because property management is a kind of a global competition. Even if it's only focused on a local market, right? You're getting investors from overseas sometimes you're getting investors from out of state. And so if they're trying to find you, "Oh, well, they said their name's light- oh man. There's a lot of lighthouse. I don't know." Right. And these are just some of the challenges with branding that we teach in our branding secrets and helping clean that up. 

[00:08:45] Sarah: Yeah. And one of the worst things is if they're looking for you and then they find a competitor instead, or they find the same or a very similar named company, but they're nowhere near your market.

[00:08:59] Because then what happens is you're now connected to this other company. Even if you're like, "well, I'm in Tennessee and this other company, yeah, but they're in like Nevada." Well, Oh, okay. You would think the distance alone would be enough to separate the two, however, we have to remember that sometimes people make mistakes and sometimes people don't read, right?

[00:09:22] So if an angry tenant from that other company is like so fuming and they get on and they're like, "I am leaving a horrible review" and it hits your company just because you have a similar name and they didn't bother to read. Now we have issues. 

[00:09:36] Jason: And there's lots of other challenges. You could have your name, like some clever misspelled name, like a barbershop called haircutz with a Z.

[00:09:43] Sarah: Like my biggest pet peeve. 

[00:09:44] Jason: Like there's lots of ways you can screw up branding. 

[00:09:47] Sarah: Spell things correctly. Don't get cute. 

[00:09:49] Jason: Or acronyms. Acronyms aren't super effective. Like PMI. Sorry guys. All right. So let's go to the second leak. So give yourself a rating on that. Like just a quick judgment, like on a scale of zero to a hundred, how effective is your brand in being memorable and in word of mouth and whatnot?

[00:10:07] So maybe it's 50%. Maybe it's totally off in the category. Maybe it's worse. Maybe it's like 20, 30%. Next perception. This is reputation. How are you perceived online? What are your ratings maybe on Yelp, on Google, on Facebook? How many reviews do you have in relation to your competition? And what is your rating? So quantity diversity, do you have reviews on lots of channels? How do you compare to your competition in your local market? Because people are going to check you out. They're going to judge you. And if your reviews are bad, even if everything else you do is amazing, this can put, be a significant clamp in the hose.

[00:10:45] And if your reviews are good, it backs up everything that you say in your sales pitch. 

[00:10:50] Sarah: And if you have no reviews at all, this is also an issue. Yeah. So sometimes people go, "Oh, well, like I'm brand new. I don't have any reviews, so I don't have that problem yet." It's still a problem. It's just a problem in a different way.

[00:11:02] Jason: So let's go to number three. So give yourself a rating on that. Zero to a hundred. Where are you at in relation to your competition? Are you the best reviewed company in your market? Are you like somewhere in the middle? Are you the worst, right? Or do you have no reputation, right? How are you perceived?

[00:11:17] All right. So you have a number there. All right. Number three, presence. This is the website, right? Your online presence. So there's a lot of different roles related to the website. I'll, I can throw out a couple, a few real quick. If you really want to grade your website, and not just like how much does Google like it?

[00:11:36] Not that if you want to grade your website, how much people like it, how effective it is for capturing business, right? How big of a leak do you have in the hose? Go to doorgrow.com/quiz and take our website quiz and grade your website. Do this, you might have a brand new, beautiful, amazing website and it's like just hemorrhaging and leaking money.

[00:11:59] All traffic feeds to the website, right? Your reviews feed to the website. Everything goes there. Your ads feed to the website. Take a look at this leak and get your grade and see what it is. And we're happy to then get on a call with you and tell you why your website sucks, help you figure out like how to make it better.

[00:12:16] So, couple of quick things. It should answer three core questions like above the fold when they first land on the page, what you visibly can see in on the screen should answer that there are three core questions, which is, "do you do what I need in the place I need it? What do you do and where?" And second, "why should I choose you to do it over your competition?" And then third is "what do you want me to do?" There should be some sort of call to action. Most websites don't even have those three really basic things, three basic questions that people have. So that's a great starting point And then there's other things like how many menu items do you have?

[00:12:54] If you have too many menu items, it actually decreases conversion rates. Do you have like distractions like social media icons and different things trying to send people away from your website which can decrease conversion rates and getting business and leads. Do you have trust symbols and social proof and testimonials and things that increase conversion rates?

[00:13:14] Do you have a lead capture form on the page? We've studied this for well over a decade. We've studied this the top website companies that target and focus on property management try to copy our stuff without understanding the psychology behind it and try and copy our designs.

[00:13:33] I believe we build the most effective and the most beautiful websites in the industry. And so if this is an issue, DoorGrow can help you with this. So, talk to us and get a new website. 

[00:13:44] Sarah: Before we move on, I just learned this yesterday, I think yesterday or the day before. So if your website was once amazing.

[00:13:51] And you're like, "no, my website is great. It's so awesome." But it's old. Then it's not doing you the good that you think it is. And maybe at one point it was, maybe it was so fantastic. But now all of a sudden, if things seem like they dried up a little bit, it could be that it needs a little bit of a refresh.

[00:14:10] And apparently the shelf life on a website is about two to three years and then it needs. To be redone. 

[00:14:17] Jason: Yeah, this is true. I've forgotten about this. I'm totally aware of this, but I just, I forgot that other people don't realize this. And so websites have a shelf life just like fashion does, just like anything else does.

[00:14:30] And so websites start to look stale or out of date or old and create the perception of being old too. So a lot of people don't perceive that their website is actually looking stale and looking old and causing issues for them, right?

[00:14:45] And people will perceive you, "Oh, this company's more modern and we're up to date or fresh or is with it or gets it, and this company it looks like they've been in business forever, maybe. They're using old techniques and they don't know what they're doing, right? So make sure your business is no older than maybe two to three years.

[00:15:03] It's probably time. 

[00:15:04] Sarah: Not your business. Your website. 

[00:15:05] Jason: Yeah, sorry. 

[00:15:06] Sarah: If your business is three years... 

[00:15:09] Jason: just get rid of it. So if your website, usually people will go until about five years. By five years, it's usually visibly painful, and this is usually where business owners reach out to us for a new website.

[00:15:22] If your website is five years old or older, it's due. And you know it, like you can look at it and go, "this doesn't look fresh." All right. So good point. All right, next is pricing. 

[00:15:32] Sarah: I love the pricing calls that we do. They're so good. 

[00:15:35] Jason: It's such a magic trick.

[00:15:35] Sarah: And also people get stuck here for a really long time. 

[00:15:39] Jason: Yeah, so most pricing, just to be clear, is set by companies focusing on the worst people in the market. They're focused on the cheapos and they're focused on what they can capture through internet marketing, which are the worst leads. And so the cheapos are really price sensitive.

[00:15:56] So it creates this sort of downward race to the bottom in terms of price. So, most people typically do a 10 percent in most markets. Maybe a little less than that in really high rent markets, or they'll do some sort of flat fee. So, Most pricing is not good and it's probably similar to what everyone else in your market is doing, and so you look the same as everybody else.

[00:16:17] So there's unique methodology in doing pricing. And so we focus on our unique blend of what we call a three tier hybrid pricing model, which focuses on three different types of buyers psychologically and creates a proper incentive to get more high rent properties, less lower end properties and it lowers your operational costs, right?

[00:16:41] Because the higher rent properties generally have a lower operational costs and they make you more money. Right. And so your pricing model is probably unknowingly incentivizing you getting on some of the worst clients and the worst properties and not helping you to set yourself apart from the competition.

[00:16:58] So we've never had anyone really come to us with good pricing, never. And so we've always helped people clean this up. And then they close more deals more easily at a higher price point. And you might think that's crazy, but that's what we do. 

[00:17:11] Sarah: And they tell us that! 

[00:17:12] Jason: Yeah.

[00:17:12] Sarah: We're not just saying it.

[00:17:14] Like our clients tell us that they're like, "Oh, I didn't think I was going to do this and I didn't want to and I didn't even think it was going to work, so I figured I'd try it and then i'll just change it back when it doesn't work," And every time, they are so surprised and they love it and they're like "man I really wish I did this sooner."

[00:17:30] That would have been so much better if I did this. 

[00:17:32] Jason: They usually get a significant number of their clients upgrading to a premium tier so they're making more money off their existing portfolio right away. And so usually pricing's this magic trick we can pull out of our hat that we can immediately pay for if they have a decent number of clients.

[00:17:47] We can immediately pay for our program and our program's now basically free, right? So let's get into the next one. So rate your pricing, if it's typical of everybody else then maybe you give yourself, if you want you can give yourself a 60 70 percent or something like that, but I would say it's a 50 percent because the profit margin difference can be pretty significant, right?

[00:18:08] But give yourself some sort of rating if you're cheaper than most of your competitors give yourself below a 50 percent Like you're worse than everybody else. So give yourself a number there. What's your leak? All right next: 

[00:18:18] Purpose. This is the most important thing that we take clients through. This causes not just a leak in your sales pipeline, but it causes a leak with your team and a leak with financials. It's one of the greatest profitability hacks.

[00:18:30] It's one of our greatest. Sales hacks, and it sounds like woo fluffy BS, but purpose is the most significant thing that we do in companies. And our clients tell us this was the most significant thing that we did. So what do you want to say about purpose? 

[00:18:45] Sarah: Yeah. So this is usually where we start in our rapid revamp and then, and only then can we then continue on with the rest of the class because everything stems from this. So if you're trying to fix your pricing and you don't understand your company culture yet, it's not going to make sense because you're going to have to redo your pricing. If you're trying to fix your website and your branding and your online perception, but you haven't figured out. the foundation of where all of these other things come from, then it doesn't matter because you're going to have to go back and fix it anyway, because you don't really have clarity on that. But once you get clarity on that, everything else becomes so much easier now. 

[00:19:23] Jason: Yeah. So the way to score this is, some questions you might ask are do you have maybe three or four core values defined?

[00:19:31] If you have a lot more than that, then give yourself a lower score because that means really, it means nothing. Do you have a clearly defined mission for the business? Are you clear on who you're targeting and is it clearly defined and written down? Like, how do they know what a good client looks like versus a bad one?

[00:19:46] Right. Are you clear on your personal motivations for why you have this business beyond just getting money? That in a way that you could relate it clearly your personal why? Are you clear on the business's purpose or your team? Right? So do you have a ceo decision making guide so others know how you think on your team, right?

[00:20:03] There's a lot of different things that deliverables in the purpose Weeks in our rapid revamp that we help businesses define, and it changes the profitability. It changes everything in the business. So based on these questions, give yourself a rating on zero to 100 percent and figure out where you're at.

[00:20:19] And if you don't have a lot of these things defined, then give yourself a pretty low grade, right? Next is pitch. So purpose feeds into the pitch and so you need those things defined. But what's your sales pitch like? Is it basically just answer questions and then hope they sign up?

[00:20:35] Which is bad. That's pretty weak, right? Or do you, for example, like us have a four phase process that's systematically like getting clear on what they need and breaking things down and then figuring out like how to deal with objections and et cetera. Right. What's your sales pitch? How effective is it?

[00:20:53] Do you have visuals that maybe facilitate that, et cetera? Right. So if you feel like you have a high close rate, right. But it's just warm leads like a referral. You're you have a really high close rate, that doesn't mean you have a good pitch. That doesn't mean you're good at selling. That just means they were a warm lead, right?

[00:21:09] So in dealing with colder leads or where it's competitive or they're looking at you and several other competitors, how good are you at convincing them to use you over everybody else? May help you see how effective your pitch is right on colder leads or more lukewarm leads, right? So give yourself a rating on pitch.

[00:21:25] Anything else related to pitch 

[00:21:27] Sarah: So I'll just one more time reiterate the company culture, you can't have a good sales pitch if you don't first know your company culture. Yeah. So if you're like, "Oh wait, like my pitch is so good. I can close anybody." You're missing your company culture and you do not have that piece defined, there is no way that you can have a great sales pitch, at least in the way that we teach it. So we have the golden bridge formula. You can not do the golden bridge formula if you do not first understand your why and your business why. You don't have those two pieces? You're not doing the golden bridge. And without the golden bridge, sales just gets hard. It just gets hard. And then it's like, "well, like I don't want to be pushy, but also I want to close deals and I have to sell people and like, I don't know, I'm in this loop I don't understand why I can't close things and like, this should be easier." And then people go and they take a bunch of courses to learn how to do sales better.

[00:22:23] You can just have a better sales pitch. 

[00:22:25] Jason: Yeah. Good point. So to sum all this up, all of these leaks are leaks in trust. And if in your pitch, for example, you are trying to sell property management, you're selling the wrong product. Nobody really cares about property management. That's not what they want to buy.

[00:22:42] And so what they really want to buy is peace of mind or safety and certainty. They want to buy, they're buying their trust in you. They want trust. And so all of these leaks in the pipeline relate to trust. They're all trust leaks, sales and deals happen. You could write this down, tattoo it on your forehead.

[00:22:59] Don't do that. Put it up on your wall. Sales and deals happen at the speed of trust. And so if you have any of these major trust leaks, you are just wasting time, energy, money, focus, cash effort. Right. And so let's get these leaks all shored up. It doesn't make sense to keep putting blood transfusions into somebody when they have their arm chopped off and they're just hemorrhaging blood.

[00:23:22] That's pretty gruesome, but 

[00:23:24] Sarah: yeah 

[00:23:24] Jason: Stop the bleeding first. And then, "Hey, it makes sense now. Now that we've stopped this major bleeding, let's now take care of things. Right?" And so get these things dialed in and shored up and what you'll find is: you may not need nearly as many leads.

[00:23:39] You won't have to spend nearly as much money on advertising or any money. Our clients don't, most of them don't spend any money on ads or lead generation, and they actually had doors faster than their competitors that are. And so this is the starting point. Get this stuff cleaned up. It's like sharpening the ax first, before you go and chop down trees, do the smart thing first and everything else becomes easier.

[00:23:59] And this really is lubricating your entire sales process. Everything flows through a lot easier. And so you could double your deals flowing through without changing any of your lead sources that you've already got going right now, just by shoring these up. And so get these blind spots dialed in and reach out to us at DoorGrow.

[00:24:15] And we'll tell you about a rapid revamp program where we tackle each of these leaks in two weeks, two weeks for each leak. And so it's a 90 day program. It's really rapid and it will transform the front end of your business forever. Okay. That's it. So you can find us at DoorGrow. com and until next time to our mutual growth.

[00:24:35] Bye everyone.

[00:24:36] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow! 

[00:25:03] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.